The level of service review is going to address the type of railway service that we have in Canada, and it will definitely compare to what is happening in the United States and Europe and Asia.
You should know, however, that both Canada and the United States have the most productive rail system of anywhere in the world because they are dedicated on rail lines for freight. Most of the other ones are sharing them with passenger. They don't have equivalent systems across countries. So when you're looking at a continent, even in Europe, they're not as efficient as they are in North America. But it will definitely look at that.
It's going to be looking at a variety of things, and we've already started discussions with the shippers, as the minister said, and the railways on the terms of reference. The kinds of things we want to look at are: what is the service they're providing today—what is the demand for the service; what are the kinds of cars; are they providing enough cars, not enough cars; what's the time it takes to get the product from origin to destination?
We're also going to be looking at the railway operations and the way that has evolved over the last few years when demand has been increasing a lot, and making sure that there aren't inefficiencies in the system there, so you get at the question of productivity and making sure that the products getting to the export market, particularly to the ports, are getting there as efficiently as possible and empty cars are returning as efficiently as possible.
We will probably be conducting it through an independent monitor who will get the data for us. We already have somebody engaged on the green sector. We want to do this for all the sectors of the economy--we're looking probably at 12 to 15 sectors--making sure that across the system we get a good measure of what's happening today and what we foresee in the future in terms of continued growth--can that service support the growth?
The issue of investment that you mentioned will come out of that discussion, because we will see whether or not the capacity that is in place today is sufficient capacity to address the needs of the future.